Gawker 
Enter your username and password.
San Francisco, 3:22 PM
Sun Nov 8
10 posts in the last 24 hours
Tip Your Editors:
tips@valleywag.com
| AIM
Valleywag:
Ryan Tate | Email
Valleywag elsewhere on the Web:
Twitter | Facebook
Valleywags Emeriti:
Nick Denton
Nick Douglas
Owen Thomas
Original material is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution.
01:32 PM
I'm happy with most of it - it's an incrementalist bill that lays the groundwork for single payer - but there's a lot I don't like. Too many things were left out, and the abortion amendment had no place in a modern society's health care structure. #healthcare
11:53 AM
We managed to find the funds (which are probably now in the billions) to fight two wars and really have nothing but lost lives to show for it and yet, somehow trying to get American citizens decent health care is going to bankrupt us.
There are legitimate points some of the Republicans also make about tort reform and access because you're talking about taking on an additional 20-30 million people with the same amount of facilities and providers. I know they've proposed adding to the class size in medical schools and such and I hope that won't get killed by the AMA, who was staunchly against it when Clinton proposed it during her try at fixing this.
I, for one, would have liked to see something in this bill about banning pharmaceutical companies from advertising prescription medications on the air and in print.
While the profession is a noble one, I can say from first hand experience that there is a great deal of them (physicians) who are morally corrupt...........when it comes to financially rewarding themselves at the expense of the American taxpayer.... as well as many of their patients. #healthcare
11:50 AM
11:39 AM
12:26 PM
11:18 AM
That said, I think the issue the pro-choice side REALLY needs to do something about is not the cost of abortions. It's access. If some woman in Alabama or Nebraska,* where all the clinics have packed up and moved after harassment and bombings, and the GYNs have been murdered and not replaced, has to drive six hours to another state to get an abortion, whether she can pay for it (or the govt does) isn't the big question.
*don't know if these are accurate examples and too lazy to look it up, but you get the idea. #healthcare
12:12 PM
[www.ms4c.org] #healthcare
01:57 PM
I worked at a clinic in California, and we routinely had women coming in from Utah, Nevada, and Oregon. Some of them came because the providers in their area were so overbooked that they would have to wait too many weeks to get in. Some of them came because they had waited for an appointment, and then found out they were in their second trimester and the provider they went to only did first trimester abortions.
The current provider shortage is crazy, and it only leads to more women having later term abortions.
There are various groups dedicated to getting poor women the funding and transportation needed to get an abortion.
There's one in NY, if you're interested: [www.nyaaf.org]
Also, this is the group we worked with in CA (they help women all over the country, not just in CA): [www.whrc-access.org] #healthcare
02:11 PM
09:35 AM
This Bill will never get through the Senate in its present form, so for it to pass in the Senate it will undergo yet another metamorphosis. Then, assuming it gets through --- and I am assuming no such thing -- it goes to Conference where it may emerge, once again, unrecognizable, or die a slow death until next year. #healthcare
09:21 AM
[tools.advomatic.com] #healthcare
05:56 AM
05:38 AM
This is the best thing you've ever written, Foster. And you are a good writer.
Observe the timestamp and note that I am clearly drunk. But it is still quite good and sad and small and true, this thing you wrote.
It's funny to be sick of a country that is so very sick. #healthcare
09:03 AM
09:31 AM
03:16 AM
01:08 AM
This thing is dead in its current form. Mark my words. #healthcare
01:17 AM
I have hope for this. #healthcare
02:43 AM
They need to start small and stop with these Monster bills.
The first step should be a small bill with 3 simple things in it
1. No more preexisting condition bullshit. That seems to be one of the biggest crimes going on by Health Care Companies.
2. Force health care compaines to compete by forcing them across state lines. As it is now they essentially have a monopoly in most states.
3. Put a fixed cost to operations.
This will greatly help us out and will get passed. #healthcare
02:54 AM
We’re not talking about reasonable folks here. The idea healthcare is even debated is sickening. #healthcare
08:23 AM
09:05 AM
09:49 AM
Also, please tell me how legally forcing people to buy health insurance will work. When a drive-by victim comes through Cook County General at 4 in the morning -- which is another reason the wait in the ER is so long in big city hospitals -- and is taken straight into the OR, are they going to throw him out because he failed to buy a policy? Nope. They're gonna take him into surgery and try to save his life and spend close to half a million dollars in post surgical care same as now.
And the government won't reimburse the county for these costs... #healthcare
10:21 AM
10:22 AM
11:51 AM
See "Hospital-based emergency care: at the breaking point"
c. 2007 By Institute of Medicine (U.S.). Committee on the Future of Emergency Care in the United States.
(View it at Amazon: pg 7: The Burden of Uncompensated Care.) #healthcare
01:06 AM
01:18 AM
12:54 AM
[www.freerepublic.com] #healthcare
01:35 AM
09:33 AM
12:34 AM
So, basically we're going to see a spike in abortion-seekers claiming they were raped, or in sympathetic doctors claiming that the abortion-seeker's life is in danger. #healthcare
12:43 AM
12:45 AM
08:27 AM
09:42 AM
10:29 AM
12:22 AM
12:41 AM
I'm Canadian... and while we pay quite a bit for contraception (I pay about $30-$40 a month for the Patch) getting an abortion is free*
(* = Up until a certain point. If you're 8 months pregnant and want one, you have to pay.) #healthcare
12:47 AM
12:57 AM
01:06 AM
Seriously, this sort of information really puts this vote and its dissenters in perspective. If health reform actually becomes law, it will be one of the largest (if not THE largest) overhauls of U.S. health care in our history. And yet the resulting system will still be behind most other developed countries in terms of breadth and quality. #healthcare
02:35 AM
(*again with the conditions- I do not pay upfront, nor do I ever see a bill for my treatment- the funds needed are taken from tax dollars, to which every working Canadian contributes at both the provincial and federal level.) #healthcare